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Interesting point by JWL. If Justin took over, would an election be a referendum on his father’s energy policies? A someone too young to remember the details on it, I’m interested in any opinions you may have on that.

Now you are talking, I would vote for any party if they had Stompin’ Tom as leader.

Tim

I think Trudeau is a jumped-up clown and would bring ruin to the party. I am sure there would be some out West who would think it was NEP referendum if Justin became leader but there are many, many reasons why Trudeau would be bad selection.

For the record I am an unreconstructed Dionista and believe M. Dion deserves another shot just as other Opposition Leaders have had. If the same rule applied then we would have had no Laurier, no Pearson. Neither Harris, nor McGuinty nor Charest would have become Premier of their provinces.

The problem with Dion is that he ran a disastrous campaign, mangled his policy platform alienated much of his party and then blamed his defeat soley on ‘negative advertising’ with no mea culpa’s He simply doesn’t get it.

Of course, seeing this list of other leaders goes to show how shallow the Liberal talent pool has become. The Lib’s need a decade in the wilderness why the new generation of leaders like Dhalla, Trudeau and LeBlanc build up their political resumes (unless of course, one of them is able to pull off an Obama and win over the country in the next 6 months – unlikely given the slow start to date)

I didn’t vote for Dion in the election but I still think he is better than the other choices on that list. At least the guy comes off as honest and somewhat likeable and wasn’t a huge fan of the Iraq war. If Dion started championing PR and actually worked towards implementing it I’d consider voting Liberal which is more than I can say about the others outside of Cauchon.

Kennedy may represent a Toronto riding, but I think his 18 years spent growing up in The Pas, Manitoba, and than school in Winnipeg, Edmonton and later founder of Alberta and Canada’s first foodbank gives him a better understanding of the West than anyone else on that list.

Tis a shame he fought the hard fight and won his seat in Toronto. His leadership hopes would look pretty good if he came home and ran in Churchill, or in Winnipeg South or one of the Edmonton seats that the Liberals used to hold.

But is Kennedy even running? I really hope someone who knows something about the West runs for leadership. Iggy has spent more time in Kurdistan the past 30 years than he has in Western Canada and while we elect NDP premiers out here, they are not modeled on the Bob Rae persona.

Ron: Education is important. I’m sure you understand that in Germany with all your little brat-wursts.
German translator: (in German) The Canadian prime minister says all our children are pork sausages and deserve to be eaten.
German chancellor: On this we can agree with our Canadian friends! Ha ha ha.

But more seriously, I can’t vote for any name on that list. My first and second choices were Manley and McKenna. If Ignatieff becomes Prime Minister I swear I’m moving to … I don’t know where. Americans move here when the government sucks, so where do we move?

Let me make a serious case for Stompin’ Tom, who, though somewhat aged (only slightly younger than John McCain) and perhaps (?) not very bilingual, would, I believe, make a great PM.

1. He is well-known, respected, telegenic, and primeministerial. That goes without saying.

2. He is a natural leader. He builds consensus, and he knows how to make a decision.

3. Most importantly, because he is modest and unassuming, his premiership would inevitably restore Cabinet government. Whereas the last, what, 40 years have seen an ever more toxic concentration of power in PMO – Harper’s ministers being little more than muppets – a Stompin’ Tom cabinet would allow each minister not only to operate independently but to do so responsibly. The Minister of Agriculture would again, as in the Golden Age, actually determine agricultural policy instead of merely implementing PMO diktat. And if he/she screwed up royally and the House voted to censure his/her conduct, Stompin’ Tom would be there to gravely but gently ask for his/her resignation.

4. Stompin’ Tom would take the venom out of politics, because nobody either in Parliament or in the media would attack Stompin’ Tom personally. There’s nothing to attack and anyway it would be electoral suicide to do so. So the whole atmostphere of our politics would be purified.

JWL says:
I think Judy Sgro has got the right idea:
“Frankly, I’d like to see the main contenders go in a room, flip a coin and come out and say this is who our leader is.”
But I would suggest paper/rock/scissors, not flipping coin, because that would allow for more contestants.

MYL says:
“More contestants” has nothing to do with it. The Liberals just can’t afford the coin.

CBC reporting that THIRTY-SIX (!) Liberal candidates failed to achieve 10% of the votes in their riding, leading to another “penalty” by losing out on the (theft of taxpayer sweepstakes) federal promotion of democracy subsidy of serious candidates’ expenses (the slush fund that led to the Tories in-and-out issues with Elections Canada last time).

Wow. 11.7% of candidates from the Natural Governing Party didn’t even scratch out 10% of votes. That has got to be an all-time futility record for them.

Hoo, boy. The attack ad writes itself. Obviously Dion meant that the Tories should not expect to get away with impossible-to-support legislation just because they expect the Liberals are too scared to bring down the House. But just look at how he said it.

The rural vote will always be the natural habitat for the CPC. Yes, the LPC might be able to steal seats with vote-splitting with NDP in rural areas, but to consistently beat the CPC in rural areas would involve the CPC seriously screwing up.

Wow. I floated the name of a rising-star young Cabinet Minister from Quebec, and nobody bit. I’m deeply wounded. ;)

Since it seems safe to float semi-serious ideas here without consequence, here’s another one: Alan DeSousa, Mayor of the Montreal Island Burough of Ville Saint-Laurent and member of the Montreal Exec Committee responsible for sustainable development and economic development.

Fair enough. I’ll suggest in response that, as the Minister responsible for implementing items relating to Bouchard-Taylor, she’s done a respectable job of keeping the file from having an even nastier second go-’round. I’d note further that for the most part the official QC responses post-Bouchard/Taylor (even the goofy Quebec values pledge form) have been markedly tamer than what the Mario Dumont’s of the world were calling for this time last year.

And for the record, I was a Dion fan as well. Given the winds blowing as they are, however, I’m trying to imagine genuinely different types of politicians for the role. I’m looking for a clean breakaway from the bovine byproduct of the past 5 years….but frankly, I’m turned off by this notion that the “generational” change that people call for when they tout Justin or Dom LeBlanc as leaders can actually come merely from picking somebody born after 1960.

I really think we need to get the people involved like Obama has in the USA. Whoever engages the hearts of Canadians through responsible dialogue and involvement together with some inspired leadership and direction will get my vote.

Sorry, but no one is even remotely admissible. Our gene pool is too small and even if it were not, it would take at least five years to groom a suitable candidate. The prospect of an extended Harper rule is perhaps unfortunate but unavoidable.

Unfortunately, the people of Canada are much the same as the people in the USA, in that they are, for the most part, unconcerned with such trivialities as “human rights”, “taxation without representation”, “The Charter of Rights And Freedoms” and “The COnstitution Act of Canada.”

As a matter of fact, the vast majority of Canadians don’t even know we HAVE a Constitution!!!

How can Canadians honestly be expected to understand what we’re voting for, when we don’t even understand how our country operates, why it was formed, of what we are at desperate risk of losing TODAY while we continue to play the “see-saw voting method” consisting entirely of “Well, party 1 screwed us, so now we’re going to vote in party 2…OK party 2 screwed us, so now we’re voting in Party 1 again…THAT’LL show THEM!!! Whoops…ok, that time it hurt…so this time we’re voting in Party 2 again!”

It’s been said that the surest sign of insanity is repeating the same mistakes over and over again, and expecting a different outcome each time.

Is Canada, as a whole, completely insane? Perhaps we’re just too busy with our (scripted and professionally edited) “Reality” shows, or reruns of (the brightest light of modern-day intellectual entertainment) “Jerry Springer” and his latest family saga?

If people don’t wake up and start to understand what they’re voting for, and how those votes affect the people over the long term, they will continue to lose on all fronts.

We have no gold resereves any longer. Our currency is backed by the same “high-grade air” that the US dollar is, and you see what that is doing both there AND here. February 14th, 2008, Stephen Harper signed a totally unpublicied “deal” with George W. Bush to allow free access between our military and the US military across eachother’s borders…they cna let us know whenever they’re done if they came in…for whatever reason…and the US now has active-duty troops fresh from Iraq ready to skip across the border at a moment’s notice. What do you feel the risk is to the USA of having all three of our Sea King’s even making it across the Detroit River, let alone mounting an attack on THEM?

People see their cute little credit cards and bank cards and passports and debit cards with those nifty little RFID chips in them, and they don’t think for a second about that that MEANS!!! If you’re on vacation, a criminal could easily sit at the airport and scan you as you wal by, getting your bank information, personal information, credit card information, and potentially driver’s lives information, all in a single second…and COMPLETELY WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE OR CONSENT….yet all the companies issuing these “chipcards” will tell you it’s 100% safe!

If people don’t start to stand up and THINK FOR THEMSELVES in very short order, there’s no telling how much further these bouts of sheer and unbridled idiocy will continue….and until we collectively THINK about what is happening to and around us, we won’t have sense enough to even start to fight back until it’s too late to change anything.

PS: The gun registry has been a complete success! The criminals have the same number of weapons they had before the ban, honest citizens have far fewer. Honest citizens have registered their weapons, and criminals–who the laws are ALLEGED to target–have not. Check out the facts for ALL HISTORICAL GUN REGISTRIES IN HISTORY, and then you will understand what the true agenda really is…take a special look at Australia’s rise in ALL CRIME RATES after only 1 year of their “successful” gun registry/ban procedure…all “said” to help the people…

Hmmmm… I just don’t think that Ignatieff would be popular enough outside Ontario. He’s certainly not popular with me but that is an intuitive female thing, I think.
Surely the Liberal Party can’t and won’t give up on the Green Shift which is NOT a punitive tax, but rather a financial reward system. And who is more passionate about it than M. Dion? I voted for Dion ~ he just needs to be able to suck back and reload.
So, send your $$$ in to support the Liberal party, guys. Even $10 helps! I’m sure they can do this if they have decent resources.
I agree with Clarence S. of Nov. 6 and also, I agree with Janet of Nov. 11: Elizabeth May MUST join the Liberal Party! It works on SO MANY LEVELS! Cathy

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